FILTER Magazine #56

By Bailey Pennick on March 26, 2013

When The Strokes began with the one-two knockout of Is This It and Room on Fire, the New York quintet’s instantly relatable lyrics mixed with an energetic and modern take on the three-minute rock song placed Julian, Fab, Nick, Albert and Nikolai at the center of the garage-rock revival, inspiring an entire wave of new artists. Ten years later, Comedown Machine suffers at the mercy of today’s trends with a lackluster jumble of genres from ’80s dance music (“One Way Trigger”) and hard-rock/hair-metal (“Tap Out”), to the ghost of Strokes songs past (“All The Time”). The results aren’t all winners, but there are gems where you wouldn’t expect them—in slower tracks like “Welcome To Japan” and “Call It Fate, Call It Karma.” While the technical talent is still here, the raw passion for rock music that made them so dominant a decade ago is gone. The Strokes now are a band under the influence...as opposed to of influence.